The figures will further embolden the critics of ARLC chairman John Grant, who has been hit in recent times by the departures of Suzanne Young and Shane Richardson plus the continued absence of a CEO.

Under pressure: ARLC chairman John Grant.

Photo: Getty Images

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There are, however, mitigating factors.

Grant refuses to touch the $52.8 million futures fund, the key to rugby league eventually being on a level footing with its main rival, the AFL, when it comes to generational planning.

Additionally, the League has taken over Gold Coast, Newcastle, Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria to save them from financial ruin. That's not going to come cheaply.

But Grant admits there is a "significant gap" with the AFL in terms of sponsorship and commercial income, even though league is more or less as attractive as a television product.

You may well dismiss this as spin. But presumably Grant has figures to back this up. If so, how can something so popular on TV be so consistently snubbed by the oft-cited "big-end of town"?

That "gap" is largely the reason the punching and shoulder charging has been banned and the game comes down hard on off-field misbehaviour.

Rugby league is massively popular in NSW and Queensland – with the bottom end of the sponsorship market. Discord is fond of repeating this historical curiousity – in Melbourne the working class VFL clubs continued during the First World War while the weathier, anglo suburbs stopped.

In Sydney rugby league continued and rugby union stopped.

That's a neat encapsulation of what the socio-economic divide in the Sydney sports market is to this day and it represents the cultural change rugby league needs to enact if it is to realise its commercial potential, even in its heartlands.

It's much easier to live in Sydney and ignore rugby league than it is to do the same in Melbourne with the AFL.

Put another way, rugby league is like Indy Car, plastered with brands that appear to Indy Car fans when really, it needs to be Formula One.

We all want things we love to stay "ours". We don't like the insinuation that our devotion isn't enough. That can go for the corner store that tries to become a franchise or the pub band that makes it big.

But we have to accept it. The likes of you and I are not enough to ensure rugby league's ability to fight off better resourced competitors.

"Non-broadcast revenue" rising by about nine per cent indicates the NRL is at least moving in the right direction here.

But perhaps not enough to justify a $14 million increase in expenditure on administration and events. If you're spending all that money, you want to have some new blue chip sponsors to show for it.

As for $48 million of the $50 million advance on TV monies going straight to the clubs, Discord is put in mind of what an administrator recently told him.

"The clubs are insatiable. What's theirs' is theirs' – and so is most of what's yours."

Right to question

Discord doesn't see how questioning the future of the All Star game is "offensive". We can question anything we like, right?

The fixture is great for indigenous communities and as a pre-season marketing tool for the League.

But it's like a basketball game involving the Harlem Globetrotters – played for the benefit of only one team. The World All Stars concept is half-arsed, counting fellows as foreigners who have already turned their back on their other nation of eligibility because of the lure of Origin.

Why not rotate the rivals on a yearly basis? The Polynesian community in Australia would benefit enormously from the sort of off-field work done by the indigenous All Stars.